SUNDAY JANUARY 10 2016
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Prison visit
An unexpected ally for a convicted killer LIVING 13
Cancer detection
Ambleside clinic offering mole mapping technology SPORTS 25
Wrestling
Cadet girls square off against U.S. national team NORTHSHORENEWS
LOCAL NEWS . LOCAL MATTERS . SINCE 1969
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Hundreds show up for stem cell drive MARIA SPITALE-LEISK mspitale-leisk@nsnews.com
The community heeded the call to save a life and came out in droves for Nancy.
NEIGHBOURLY NOTES Ginny Cathcart shares a recollection on the memory board set up to commemorate the end of an era in Edgemont Village, with popular longtime businesses Trims and Peter Rabbit leaving their current locations in the 3100-block of Edgemont Boulevard. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD
Nancy Taylor is the North Vancouver RCMP volunteer and longtime Lynn Valley resident currently battling leukemia and in desperate need of a life-saving stem cell donor. On Thursday 141 people from all walks of life turned up to the North Vancouver RCMP detachment, which hosted a stem cell drive in support of Taylor. One man even rode his bike from Richmond just to be tested to see if he was a match. There were other stories of strangers stepping up for the cause, according to North Vancouver RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Richard De
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SCHOOLS: SD44 PLANS FOR FUTURE GROWTH IN MOODYVILLE, LONSDALE NEIGHBOURHOODS
Urban school model touted for LoLo JUSTIN BEDDALL jbeddall@nsnews.com
Bill Vander Zalm was the B.C. premier the last time the North Vancouver School District opened a brand new school to serve a fast-growing enrolment area.
That was in 1990, with the completion of Seymour’s Dorothy Lynas elementary, which was spurred by a massive residential development in the area in the late 1980s. Now, 26 years later, the school district is considering the need for another new elementary school, this time for Lower Lonsdale. In late October, the school district submitted its five-year capital plan to the Ministry of Education that included a request for a new K-7 school. “It’s really a signal to the ministry that there’s potential for that Lower Lonsdale school and it also
enables us to proceed with a little more formal discussions with the municipality and the ministry,” said John Lewis, schools superintendent. The school district’s draft facilities 2015 update forecasts an additional 1,520 apartment units in Lower Lonsdale and 650 apartments/850 townhouses in Moodyville to 2029. Using yield factors of 0.28 to 0.33 students per townhouse and 0.05 to 0.08 students per apartment, that translates into 76 to 122 more students in the Lower Lonsdale area and 271 to 333 more students in Moodyville within the next 20 years. “You want to have your schools where your population is. And I think the sense of Lower Lonsdale is that there’s a population that is having to head up the hill to Queen Mary and Ridgeway and they would be better served by having a school in closer proximity to them,” Lewis said. The city’s Moodyville development is expected to attract
more young families looking to get into the residential market and “that is typically when they start to have their first couple of children.” “It’s a shifting of the demographics,” added Lewis, who said that collectively there’s been a “gradual enrolment increase” across North Vancouver. Despite recent housing assessments that show North Vancouver to be increasingly unaffordable, it’s still highly desirable. “North Vancouver is a very attractive community; people (are) moving from the west side of Vancouver to North Vancouver attracted to the schools, the communities, the parks that we have, the access to recreation. So people are moving in.” Although there haven’t been new schools built in a quarter century, there have been several rebuilds of existing schools that
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